


Crude Judgments

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Anger, Awkward Romance, Banter, Chases, Covert Operation, Developing Relationship, Emotionally Repressed, Enemies to Friends, Escape, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Imprisonment, Major Character Injury, Medical Examination, Post-Predacons Rising (Prime Movie), Rescue Missions, Snark, The Author Regrets Nothing, This Ship Actually Works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 05:29:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11201439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: When a former enemy is taken prisoner by a party of Neutrals, Arcee must return to her roots as the Autobots' covert specialist and break him out. After all, Megatron is destined to betheirprisoner, not the Neutrals’.





	Crude Judgments

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Scars of Innocence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10849101) by [Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor). 



> This is the sequel to "Time and Effort", "Precious Queen", and "Scars of Innocence", three other Megacee stories I was commissioned to write. I hope you like it!

Arcee had sensed the disturbance long before the call came through the comm. link she had stolen. Barely a nanoklik later, she was lunging away from the guard she had just disposed of and moving back the way she’d come, sputtering curses as the panicked Neutral bot on the other end continued. He sounded young, unfamiliar, which meant he was one of the most recent arrivals on Cybertron. He had already been assigned to guard duty?

 _That was pretty premature_ , Arcee groused mentally as she sprinted down the hall, focusing on this entirely unwelcome news: one of the prisoners had escaped and though he had been discovered, they were having a Pit of a time apprehending him and taking him back to his cell.

 _Megatron_. Of course it was Megatron—who else could it be? He hadn’t been particularly pleased when, as soon as he made an attempt to return to civilization, he was taken prisoner and propelled into a cell designed for a mech half his size, but what else had he expected? Ultra Magnus wouldn’t have welcomed him back with open arms, much less a party of Neutrals. As it was, Arcee was surprised that the Neutral leader hadn’t simply shot him on sight.

In a way—probably a fairly ridiculous, deluded way—Arcee felt that not all of it was Megatron’s fault. Given the fact that he had a conspicuous change of spark, he felt he was being imprisoned prematurely, so he was making an escape attempt. If Arcee were in that kind of situation, she would do the exact same thing, and that was much to her chagrin. She wasn’t meant to sympathize with the enemy! Despite their last encounter out in the wilderness, he _was_ her enemy. He always was and he always would be.

This was what she continued to remind herself of as she ducked rapidly along corridors toward his approximate location. Megatron had protested his imprisonment just once, when he first was taken into custody, and more by rote than anything. It was clear to all of the witnesses that he had been expecting it for quite a while; his posture expressed nothing but dull resignation as his hands were shoved into stasis cuffs that would inhibit transformation.

Arcee had watched it all on the screen in the Autobot conference room, armed with a sinking feeling that she would be the one Ultra Magnus assigned to infiltrating the Neutral base and freeing the former warlord. After all, he was destined to be _their_ prisoner, not the Neutrals’.

Sure enough, Arcee had been forced to pay him a visit in the cell block not long later. He had been quite amused to see her, but Arcee had kept the conversation short, reminding him that the only reason she was “swooping in to rescue” him was that he needed to be judged for everything he had brought upon their planet by proper Autobot law.

As far as she could tell, he had agreed, adopting a thousand-mile stare as he no doubt considered all of the charges to his name and repeated lowly, “Yes…I _am_ to be judged.”

Clearing her throat bluntly to bring him back to the present, she had explained that she would take a breem to scout out the rest of the defenses and then return to him. A _breem_ —that was all she had asked and yet he hadn’t listened!

The two-wheeler felt she knew his protocol well enough that he hadn’t jeopardized her reconnaissance out of some misplaced sense of pride, but out of the belated realization that his problems would become a lot harder to take care of now that he couldn’t smash them into the ground.

That was a wise assumption to make, actually. Whatever else Megatron was, he genuinely wasn’t as unconcerned about his opponents as he pretended to be most of the time.

There were blaster shots echoing down the next two corridors, as well as shouting voices, Arcee realized, drawing her own weapons. One voice she recognized as the young guardsmech who had set off the alarm, but the other two were unfamiliar, howling enraged curses in two unique Cybertronian dialects.

Only Megatron could make someone that furious that fast. She came to a stop, dropping back behind the intersection, and no sooner had she done so did Megatron back up into her line of sight; his face and hands were leaking energon from shallow cuts and there were several dents marring his chestplate. His hands were still cuffed, which meant he hadn’t been fighting back, thank Primus—if he had, someone undoubtedly would have been killed already.

“You have somewhere you’re eager to go, Megatron?!” Arcee spat at him, to which he simply rolled his violet optics and made a dismissive gesture forward. Huffing, the femme swung around the corner, leveling her blasters at the three mechs across the hall. “This mech is in Autobot custody; hold your fire!”

The Neutrals did the exact opposite, their crude blasters scattering shots over Arcee’s head and shoulders, the heat from the near-misses stinging her sensory net. That sensation was nothing compared to the sudden weight crashing in and closing around her from behind, wrenching her sideways down the hall. The massive thud of Megatron’s footsteps vibrated around the thrashing and flailing femme as he sprinted down the hall with her wedged firmly in one hand.

“To be accurate, I have yet to be taken into Autobot care,” he reminded her with an edge in his voice as he ducked a low overhanging toward the next hall.

“Put me _down_ , frag it!” Arcee howled in frustration, thrashing yet again when he didn’t comply and then crying out as the sharp movement sent a fresh lance of pain down her backstrut. All she could do was clench her teeth as the scenery blurred around her until Megatron ducked into a quiet stockroom and then quite succinctly dropped her. Contrary to what he believed, she wasn’t prepared for it; all of the air was driven from her vents as she crashed onto the metal floor with a reedy yelp.

She was quick to attempt scrambling upright, systems burning with anger and humiliation, but an unexpected wave of nausea and pain alerts slowed her down, forcing a hiss through her teeth. Megatron paused, looking her up and down critically, and then frowned lightly.

“What’s your assessment?” he asked shortly.

Arcee made an irritated noise, struggling, but as he lowered himself to one knee beside her, she finally managed to sit up in one forced motion. “Did you see any pursuit?” she shot back in a voice equally clipped, her jaw clenching shut on the last word.

“No, though I suspect they’ll pinpoint our location soon. Why don’t you tell me how badly you’re injured?”

She grimaced. “Feels like I took some shrapnel,” she admitted at last, more exasperated about it than anything else. “It’s still inside.”

Optics narrowing when she didn’t elaborate, the large mech leaned more weight on his knee, casting a shadow over her as he prompted, almost jadedly, “Do you intend to carry it with you back to your base or are you going to let me examine it?”

Glowering, Arcee started to shrug one shoulder but thought better of it as the area tingled warningly. “My back,” she grumbled at last, leaning forward as he maneuvered around her with more inelegance than she had expected.

“You need not fear permanent injury,” Megatron relayed as he peered at the wound, hot air from his vents washing down her plating. “The shrapnel entered here—”

Arcee flinched lightly as he brushed clawed fingers across the base of her left winglet. “Well, you’re clearly no medic, but you’re right,” she growled, twitching the winglet out of his immediate reach. “That’s not a critical juncture.”

“As it stands, it still needs a field dressing. May I be your _medic?_ ” he quipped wryly, rising and approaching the crates farther into the room. As he broke into them, foraging for supplies, Arcee noticed how collected his movements were— _too_ collected, to the point of being stiff, as if he was suppressing an urge to do something unseemly to someone.

Somehow she doubted that someone was her, but she still couldn’t help but wonder what it was fueling that controlled anger. She wasn’t about to ask and reveal that she was curious; she had a feeling he would take too much amusement from that.

As he returned with some low-grade medical sealant, she couldn’t help but notice how he was taking most of his weight onto one leg. “Are you going to be okay to walk?” she demanded skeptically.

Megatron half-laughed at that, firmly applying the hooked pressure of his fingertips against her winglet and making her grimace. “What would the alternative be?”

“Well, I’d leave you behind,” she answered bluntly. He wasn’t as quick to parry with a comeback as she had thought he would be…In fact, he stayed quiet in the face of that statement, continuing his work until the sealant had hardened against the wound. Rotating her winglet testingly against the seal, Arcee opinioned casually, “Crude…”

As he rose and limped around to face her, Megatron bared his teeth, a flash of humor and viciousness all at once. “Give me the Forge of Solus Prime and the contents of a Decepticon armory—you get the Dark Star Saber. Fifteen minutes in a maintenance closet, you get crude medical dressings.”

Once he came to a steady stop, he held out his cuffed hands to her and she raised an eyebrow, dubiously questioning. Looking for all the world like he didn’t know why she would hesitate, the former warlord held that position. Blinking up at him, she could see the anger lingering in his optics, but there was determination there too…humor, and a vicious streak so wide that she couldn’t help but keep staring.

After almost a full minute, she gingerly put her hands into his and let herself be pulled upright, muttering, “If you think I’m taking those cuffs off, you can get fragged, alright?”

As they emerged into the corridor, they could hear muffled noises from the next several intersections: the distant sound of feet hitting the ground, of panic beginning to spread. Arcee’s reconnaissance had given an approximate base complement of fifty. Once those three they had escaped set off a more expansive red alert, they would have many more Neutral parties to deal with in very short order.

Ex-venting deeply, she glanced back up at him and found he was already looking down, his head cocked towards those approaching footsteps and that perfect mix of anger and nonchalant resolve burning in his optics. After another moment or two he grinned, showing off all of his razor-edged teeth, dark and ready. Slowly and surely, despite everything that told her not to, she felt her lips curl in return.

“Shall we?” she offered quietly, her hands retaking their weaponized forms. She sensed the crude, lethal desperation and black amusement radiating from her companion as he flexed his own hands—if she knew him, they were weapons in and of themselves.

“Yes,” Megatron concurred, as something almost like her partner in crime, with a bright sneer of challenge. “Yes, Arcee, I think we shall.”


End file.
